Friday, December 19, 2008

I saw this at Evolving Thoughts; it's a list of 219 movies, with the suggestion that if you've seen more than 85 you have no life. My count is 119, and even that is generous because I only counted movies I've seen all the way through; for several of those not marked I've seen most of the movie, just not part of it (usually the beginning or the end, of course). I had originally put my number at 114 but going back over the list I realized that there were several I had seen but simply forgotten.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

By the example of my lord St Nicholas she will secretly send gifts to these good people by her almoner, without even the poor themselves knowing who is sending them the alms....She will speak to the poor and to the sick; she will visit their bedsides and will comfort them sweetly, making her excellent and welcome gift of alms. For poor people are much more comforted and accept with more pleasure the kind word, the visit, and the comfort of a great and powerful person than of someone else. The reason fo rthis is that they think that all this world scorns them, and when a powerful person deigns to visit them or to comfort them they feel that they have recovered some honour, which is naturally a thing that everyone desires.

Christine de Pisan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, or the Book of the Three Virtues. Penguin (New York: 1985) 53.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

We are approaching Christmas, of course, so here's an article on the O Antiphons. (This webpage is also a good source.) The Advent Antiphons, which date back at least to the ninth century, are probably best known from the fact that in the twelfth century they were reworked by an anonymous source as a French hymn, which was put into Latin at some point between then and the eighteenth century, which Latin version in turn was translated in the nineteenth century by Neale into the lyrics "Draw Nigh, Draw Nigh, Emmanuel," which time and much singing has altered to the following (with some variations):

O Come, Desire of nations, bindIn one the hearts of all mankind;Oh, bid our sad divisions cease,And be yourself our King of Peace.Rejoice! Rejoice! EmmanuelShall come to you, O Israel!

The usual music to which it is sung appears to be Gregorian chant adapted to French plain song adapted to nineteenth century hymnody (often adapted to twentieth century tastes). From generation to generation, from nation to nation, from language to language, from culture to culture, people young and old, rich and poor, have carried forward the Advent message, adapted in words and music but never changed in point: Christ our Lord comes, the Star who brings light to those who live in the darkness and shadow of death.

Democracy, it seems, is the rule of the merciless. Thomas Kostigen argues that we should do away with Presidential pardon:

Why, oh why, should one individual be able to gain favor (and freedom) over another in a democratic system such as ours? No. The pardon system should be done away with, and along with it the ethical controversy that it portends.

Yes, why, oh why, don't we punish individuals as if they were all exactly the same! Oh, that's right, because sometimes, as James Wilson puts it, people "may be unfortunate in a higher degree, than that, in which they are criminal." And because sometimes, due to particular circumstances of the case, we can make a reasonable judgment that we would all benefit more if the person involved were given a second chance. And sometimes, perhaps just a little, because we need some clear symbol that laws are not perfect, that courts are not flawless, that mistakes are not unforgivable, and that compassion is essential to the health of justice.

P.S. Ruckman, Jr. notes that Kostigen's argument is based only on a few cases that make it into the papers:

And that is too bad. Kostigen should consider writing down the names of the 179 individuals who have received pardons and commutations from President Bush. Each name should be placed on a separate card. Kostigen should then place the cards in a bag and draw names randomly, until he comes up with one that he knows.

And President Bush is notoriously stingy in his the pardon power (Ruckman has a good post on that, too); a more reasonable use of the pardoning power would increase the names on the list. We should not just casually dismiss something that reaches into so many lives, so many families, so many communities.

Out of these you can build number systems. But you can also do any sort of Boolean algebra with them, which means you can do standard propositional logic. So, for instance, this can be the disjunction (p v q):

(pq)

This would then be conjunction:

([p][q])

To negate anything, we take its inverse, which, as noted above, is done with angle brackets:

<p>

Then rules for doing things with these brackets make it possible to handle all the transformations of standard propositional logic.

The brackets are reversed, but of course that's arbitrary. Of course, one would expect similarities in notations; but it never would have occurred to me offhand that Tom's algebra of logic was in the same family as boundary mathematics and so it was a bit of a surprise. (Surprise, I find, is almost the essence of logic.) But it means that one should be able to adapt boundary mathematics to do categorical syllogisms; and, vice versa, Tom's algebra of logic to do a hefty amount of mathematics. A smarter person wouldn't have been surprised by that, either; but I am very slow about these things. Something for me to think about, in both directions.

Mill in a number of places talks about worthiness as a department of utility distinct from morality in the strict sense. In those places he doesn't address the question of how it is distinct from morality; so it raises the question of how we might best understand this distinction.

Mill talks about worthiness elsewhere, in his argument against the ethics of Auguste Comte. The problem with the ethics of positivism, Mill suggests, is that it rejects the view that "between the region of duty and that of sin there is an intermediate space, the region of positive worthiness." Instead, Mill says, we should identify a standard of altruism that is obligatory but that allows for supererogation, a meritorious region beyond the call of duty; and he has an interesting argument that utility requires such a supererogatory region:

So the greatest happiness requires that beyond the obligation there may be room for people to do goodness spontaneously and without subject to demand. Mill does hold that as time goes on the region of moral duty expands, through promise and reasonable expectation, so that virtue that once was uncommon becomes common; but there has to be space between duty and sin.

Mill goes on to connect this argument with what has to be one of the only unequivocal affirmations of the value of Catholic casuistry in nineteenth-century England:

What is perhaps more interesting is that this criticism of Comte is clearly related to the criticisms found elsewhere of intuitionists and Benthamite utilitarians. We should cultivate personal enjoyments, and rather than placing the "moralization" of these enjoyments in the demand that everyone else enjoy them as well, we should instead place it in "cultivating the habitual wish to share them with others, and scorning to desire anything for oneself which is incapable of being so shared." The Benthamites treat the moral aspect of human life, i.e., duty as if it were the only one of importance; the intuitionists have (according to Mill) no principle for anything that is not morality in the strict sense; and the positivists allow no space between duty and sin. Mill insists against all three that the importance of free and voluntary moral cultivation (in the broad sense of 'moral') of one's own worthy enjoyments and tastes is an essential part of human life, and recommends his own version of utilitarianism against all three on the grounds that it takes this into account. This appears primarily to be aesthetic for Mill, in all three contexts; but it's clear from the discussion of Comte that it is not merely so, since morally heroic action is clearly taken to be an unusually great form of worthiness. There's a sense in which good taste is for Mill always moral taste; the difference between it and morality in the strict sense being that its normative force is weaker (things pertaining to morality in the strict sense are obligatory, while things pertaining to good taste are worthy of being done, although optional). While the precise form in which he deploys this idea against his opponents varies somewhat, it does seem to be a consistent theme in Mill, and is arguably one of the more important features of his system, since it is here that he places much of the superiority of his own approach over its major rivals.

Monday, December 15, 2008

According to the above theory, Revealed Religion should be especially poetical—and it is so in fact. While its disclosures have an originality in them to engage the intellect, they have a beauty to satisfy the moral nature. It presents us with those ideal forms of excellence in which a poetical mind delights, and with which all grace and harmony are associated. It brings us into a new world—a world of overpowering interest, of the sublimest views, and the tenderest and purest feelings. The peculiar grace of mind of the New Testament writers is as striking as the actual effect produced upon the hearts of those who have imbibed their spirit. At present we are not concerned with the practical, but the poetical nature of revealed truth. With Christians, a poetical view of things is a duty,—we are bid to colour all things with hues of faith, to see a Divine meaning in every event, and a superhuman tendency. Even our friends around are invested with unearthly brightness—no longer imperfect men, but beings taken into Divine favour, stamped with His seal, and in training for future happiness. It may be added, that the virtues peculiarly Christian are especially poetical—meekness, gentleness, compassion, contentment, modesty, not to mention the devotional virtues; whereas the ruder and more ordinary feelings are the instruments of rhetoric more justly than of poetry—anger, indignation, emulation, martial spirit, and love of independence.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Unbelievers, however, cannot come to know the Trinity through these vestiges which rational creatures reflect as in a glass, because without a heart purified by faith they cannot know even that it is a glass; and hence they cannot come to know through it the things which are visible there. Thus Augustine says, in Book XV, On the Trinity: "Those who know their own mind, in whatever way it can be seen, and in it this Trinity, and yet do not believe nor understand that it is the image of God, do indeed see the glass, but so far do not see through it him who is to be seen there. Thus they do not know that what they see is a glass, that is, an image. If they knew this, perhaps they would realize that he whose glass this is should be sought through it, and somehow provisionally be seen, their hearts being purified by unfeigned faith so that he who is now seen through a glass may be seen face to face."

Caveats

For a rough introduction to my philosophy of blogging, including the Code of Amiability I try to follow on this weblog, please read my fifth anniversary post. I consider blogging to be a very informal type of publishing - like putting up thoughts on your door with a note asking for comments. Nothing in this weblog is done rigorously: it's a forum to let my mind be unruly, a place for jottings and first impressions. Because I consider posts here to be 'literary seedings' rather than finished products, nothing here should be taken as if it were anything more than an attempt to rough out some basic thoughts on various issues. Learning to look at any topic philosophically requires, I think, jumping right in, even knowing that you might be making a fool of yourelf; so that's what I do. My primary interest in most topics is the flow and structure of reasoning they involve rather than their actual conclusions, so most of my posts are about that. If, however, you find me making a clear factual error, let me know; blogging is a great way to get rid of misconceptions.